by Dan Davis
“So,” Stephen began. “What do we do until then?”
I looked at them. Stephen, Thomas, Eva and pursed my lips, considering whether I should speak what had long been on my mind.
“Do you mean to slay us, now?” Thomas asked. He spoke softly, with no challenge in his voice. It sounded as though he would have almost welcomed it. “To be rid of all those given the Gift of the blood?”
The truth was, I had considered it. I had ruminated upon it, on and off, for years. By my hand as well as William’s, there had been a great proliferation of immortals walking the Earth, and I felt that it was my duty to put an end to all of them, including the ones from my own blood. Other than Eva, of course.
Spreading my open hands, I spoke softly. “It never crossed my mind,” I said. “However, we know from Bertrand and from William himself that my brother left dozens of immortals in Christendom. Knights and lords and God only knows who else. They must be stopped. No one will stop them if I do not.”
“If you do not?” Eva asked. “You alone?”
I held her gaze for a moment. “Stephen, my good fellow, would you be so kind as to ask Khutulun to come inside now. There is something I would like to propose to you all.”
All but Khutulun sat on the benches on the other side of the table from me. They were all exhausted and should have been resting. But I needed to speak and I think they needed to hear it.
“You were each thrust into this existence, in one way or another, through the actions of my brother.” That was true for Eva and also for Thomas. I looked at Stephen and Khutulun, who had joined me voluntarily and then begged me to grant them the Gift, each for their own reasons. “Some more than others, perhaps. And yet we have remained bound together for years. You have followed me for thousands of miles, through horrors and hardships. You men renounced sworn oaths because you knew you had a higher calling. A greater moral duty, to destroy a particular form of evil that no one else could. You swore to defeat that evil. And now you have.” I cleared my throat, hesitant to continue in case they refused what I was about to offer. “But perhaps it is time to exchange new oaths. Perhaps, I would swear to you that I would protect you from all who would do you harm and provide for you wealth and the blood you need to survive. And perhaps you would swear to serve me and do as I command, where it serves the cause of our Order.”
“Our Order?” Thomas said, frowning.
“An Order, yes. An Order dedicated to a single purpose. We would make oaths to dedicate our lives to destroying all immortals that William de Ferrers has made. First in Christendom, and then wherever else we may find them. And we swear to kill William himself when he returns from the East.”
Stephen was nodding enthusiastically. The others did not immediately protest, at least.
“And if he does not return?” Thomas said. “What then?”
“Then we will swear to pursue him to the ends of the Earth and cut off his head wherever we find him.”
I wanted to say more. I knew I had said it all rather badly, and I wished to explain how it would give us a common purpose, and it would mean that we continued to rely on each other but I fell silent.
“I will swear it,” Stephen said, eagerly. “I will swear the oath. We can do great things together, I know we can. Yes, I will swear it.”
Thomas pursed his lips. “It would be an honourable duty.” He inclined his head.
“You want me to live in your land?” Khutulun asked. Even filthy and unkempt, and in a dark hovel, her beauty shone like the moon and the stars. “I will not do this. I will return to my people.”
Eva’s head snapped sharply to me and I knew what she was thinking. That I could not let her go. She was a blood drinker. She would never age, so far as we knew, and she was a killer besides. Clever, dangerous. To let her go would immediately undermine everything I wanted to establish. It was easy to read Eva’s thoughts in that fleeting glance.
Khutulun should be the first immortal executed by our new Order.
“Very well,” I said, instead. “Go home. Be with your people.” I leaned forward and pointed a finger at her. “But if you make any trouble. If you become another Hulegu, I will kill you, too.”
Khutulun laughed in my face, her expression utterly contemptuous. “I will wait until the Ilkhan’s funeral. Only then will I go.” She held my gaze, daring me to challenge her even though she surely knew I would best her.
How she had gotten wind of my plans, I could not comprehend, for I had been careful not to tell her. Then I looked at Stephen, who was studiously inspecting a point on the ceiling.
“Stephen, you great blabbering fool,” I muttered. “Are your virtues so easily overturned by the handsomeness of a woman’s face?”
Eva barked out a bitter laugh. “Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother's eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own?”
I smiled. “A fair question.”
“Khutulun,” I said to her, “it is important that you understand. If you make any other immortals with your own blood, or if you use your strength against Christian kingdoms, or if you speak of me or our Order to anyone, I shall not hesitate to slaughter you. Do you believe you could stand against me?”
She tossed her braids and scoffed but she lowered her head in submission. “I understand. I have no further interest in you or your Order.”
After living together with her, fighting beside her, teaching her our languages and training her to fight more effectively, she could throw us off so easily. Perhaps it was because her heart was broken from her loss. Perhaps it was the unassailable gulf that existed between our two peoples. Or perhaps it was that she was only ever a black-hearted Tartar with a beautiful countenance.
“By what name should our Order be known?” Stephen said, suddenly.
“It will not be known,” I said to him and to all of them. “It will be a secret known only by the members of the order. But its name amongst us will be the Order of the White Dagger.”
Eva’s head snapped up at that, her eyes shining. Thomas looked to the heavens, perhaps recalling that it was as he was being sliced open by my brother in the Khan’s palace that little Nikolas had used my dagger to attack William.
“You have named it this,” Stephen said, “because your fine dagger has upon it the image of Saint George and we will be dedicated to protecting Christendom from the dragon that is William’s men. Perhaps we should call the Order after the saint?”
I shook my head before he had even finished speaking. “No, Stephen. We will protect Christendom from the dragon, that is true, and we will seek to uphold knightly ideals. But we, too, are the dragons.”
We waited near to Maragha for the dust to settle. Without Hassan to help organise the network of informants, it was difficult but we watched and waited and saw how the Ilkhan’s great funeral was planned. It took place on the huge island in Lake Urmia. Only the inner circle of the Ilkhanate’s Mongols was in attendance, including Hulegu’s sons, all sired prior to William’s Gift, of course. The eldest, Abaqa, became the ruler of the Ilkhanate. Following his death after seventeen years, another of Hulegu’s sons became the ruler, Tekuder, who was also at the funeral.
The ceremony also featured the sacrifice of twenty-seven beautiful virgin girls. Their blood was poured across the burial site and then entombed with Hulegu.
Entombed along with vast amounts of treasure.
We did not want all of it. Indeed, we could not have transported so much as half of it without buying masses of slaves and horses and wagons to carry it and then we would have required an army to protect it.
But we crossed the lake at night, hopping from island to island in our two small boats. I was tired by the time we got there but I had energy enough left to kill all of the honour guards and slay the barbarian priests chanting and praying for the soul of their departed lord.
Of all the gold and silver and fine furniture and cloth that was buried, we took only the precious coins and the gemstones, and the finest
jewellery.
It was a fortune, and we would need it.
I allowed Khutulun to take more than I should have because Eva was right and I was always a fool for women.
But there was enough left over to pay for passage across the Black Sea, and even to pay for comfortable cabins on a ship to Venice. We could afford to pay for plenty of healthy slaves for the journey who we bled every other day or so. That was how, after many days at sea, we came back to Christendom. Back to the lands where we all belonged, amongst people like us, where we could begin once again to track down and slaughter the spawn of William de Ferrers.
And that was when my dear Eva left me.
Part Seven – Venice ~ 1266
Though we had called at numerous ports on the journey home, disembarking from the ship at Venice felt like I had finally returned to civilisation. Though the Venetians were a haughty, arrogant people and were interested only in trade, and power over the Genoese, with whom they had been at war, their remarkable city was a fine sight to see after so many years in foreign lands. The urchins surrounded us the moment I set foot on the dockside, asking where we had come from and touting their wares. A few of the more desperate tugged on my sleeves until I clouted them about the ears.
“Best wine in the city, sir,” they would say. “Come, follow me and you will see.”
“Our rooms are clean. How many beds do you need, lord?”
“Such food we have, sir, you will never leave Venice.”
“Are you looking for a woman’s company, my lord? My master’s house has all that you could desire.”
The cleverer ones spoke French, and one or two even had a stab at English. And yet for all the familiarity I felt for the place and for the people, it was not England. It was not even France.
My companions and I had a task to complete and oaths, made to one another, to fulfil. There were two lords that we knew of, in France or in England, who we had to hunt down.
Stephen had been talking to me for months about his grand ideas for how to maintain the efforts of the Order of the White Dagger over many decades or even centuries, should we need to do so. A day after arriving in Venice, we sat all together while we ate at a busy tavern overlooking the lagoon. It was time to make a final decision about where we went after Venice.
“We should most certainly establish ourselves as merchants,” Stephen said, gesticulating with a chunk of bread. “And we should absolutely do so in London. Use some of our wealth to purchase an appropriate sturdy dwelling, perhaps buy a ship, buy and sell goods. And then we have an explanation for the wealth that we have and for our presence in society.”
“You are always so keen for us to be merchants, Stephen,” I said. “What do you even know of it?”
He waved his bread around. “It cannot be a difficult thing. Look at the fools we have met who are as rich as princes. But surely you see that we can have public wealth and means in this way without the responsibilities that come with obtaining land in fief from some baron who we would have to answer to?”
“Do you think that the merchants of London, or anywhere, will simply allow us to join them?” I pointed out. “Do you know how closely these merchants guard their trade? They do not know us.”
Again, he was unconcerned. “We can convince them.”
“How?” Eva asked, peering at him over her cup.
He grinned and shrugged. “Every man wants something. We will have to find out what each man wants and then give it to him. And so we will become established in London.”
“Why not Paris?” Thomas asked.
I nodded. “London is the worst place on all the Earth,” I said, and then remembered Karakorum. “Almost.”
“We are English,” Stephen said, then coughed. “Other than you, Thomas. We would do better with London as our home.”
“We have not needed a home these last years,” I said. “We can continue to move from place to place, as we need.”
Eva sighed. “Always, we have needed somewhere, have we not? Why continue to live like steppe nomads when we do not have to.”
I tried to get them to understand. “I had a home,” I said, thinking wistfully of distant Ashbury. “It is all very fine for a while but your servants, your friends, your lord, will all begin to notice that you do not age. And that is not something you can easily explain away. Why make a home at all? Why become established in a place when we would be run out of it within a few years? Perhaps even earlier than then. After all, it is likely that our blood slaves would speak to the servants of other masters in the city of our regular bloodletting. Gossip can be deadly in a town of meddlers like London.”
He nodded, excited to tell me what he had evidently been thinking for some time. “The blood slaves have never been a problem so far, Richard. A little bloodletting is good for everyone, is it not? The gossip might say we are overly concerned for our servants’ health but no more. Anyway, my thinking is that we operate two homes, in different parts of the kingdom. And I could live alone in London while you all continue to search for William’s immortals wherever the scent leads. After some years living in London, when my eternal youth begins to be remarked upon, I would move to the second house across the country and call myself by a different name, leaving the London house in the hands of a capable steward. And then, after a few years when most of the existing merchants have died, I can return to the first home in London and continue to support your ongoing searches with the necessary funds. When I so return, I could claim to be the son of myself, do you see? As you yourself have done, Richard. And so we may inherit by legal means that which we would already own.” He dipped his bread in his wine and sat back to chew on it.
“Sounds complicated,” I said. “Complicated plans fail.”
“Not always,” he said, trying and failing to charm me with a grin. “Not in Maragha.”
I shook my head, still feeling uneasy with his ideas but unsure precisely why. His blind confidence, perhaps, which was certain to come crashing down when it met with the complexity of reality.
“So,” Thomas said. “You wish to be an idler in London while the rest of us trawl the Kingdom of France and the rest of Christendom for William’s spawn, is that it?”
I laughed but Stephen made a show of being greatly wounded by the suggestion. “Indeed, no, sir,” Stephen said. “I would apply what I have learnt from our dear departed lord of Assassins. We all saw the value of the knowledge we gained through speaking to merchants, troubadours, doctors, and any itinerant traveller, did we not? Imagine the very same thing, only for Christendom.”
“Men’s tongues wag only for coin,” I said. “And thus, you would burn through our fortune in a matter of years. Already, Stephen, you have purchased two homes for yourself in your mind’s eye. And you imagine that our order’s wealth would survive such expenditure?”
He sat back, satisfied with himself. “And that is why I must also become a successful merchant.”
Eva stared at Stephen thoughtfully. At the time, I believed that she was as grudgingly impressed as I was by the cunning young fellow’s creativity. And yet, my wife was having quite different thoughts.
Before leaving Venice, we spent time depositing and withdrawing wealth from the Templars and banking houses. We had those names to pursue, and we agreed first to head overland into France to track down Simon de Montfort, the French lord who William claimed to have turned. We decided that Stephen was to travel on alone by ship to England and there set himself up in the manner which he had been envisioning for many years.
That is to say, the decision was made for Stephen to travel alone but that is not what happened in fact.
And there was another thought on my mind I had not been able to truly ignore for years, no matter how often I attempted to dismiss it. When I came close to catching my brother in that gatehouse in Baghdad, he had made a claim so preposterous that it could not possibly have been the truth.
William had spoken to me of what he called the Ancient One. A man he claimed was
our grandfather. A man who could be found in Swabia, perhaps three hundred miles north of Venice. Across difficult terrain but not a long journey, certainly not compared to the distances I had travelled before.
I was sorely tempted to head north.
***
“I recall quite clearly what William said,” I muttered to Eva, speaking softly. “He said that our true grandfather lives, and he is thousands of years old. Thousands of years. The things he has seen. The power that he has. You would learn a lot from him, brother, if you would but go to him. That is what William said to me in the gatehouse in Baghdad.”
“And what do you think he meant by that?” Eva asked me, stretching her long, naked body beside me.
We lay in bed with the morning sun streaming in through the open window. In the street below, Venetian voices shouted and the tangy scent of the waters mixed with the smell of fish being cooked on the dockside.
It would be one of the last times we shared such a moment together.
“I have been thinking of it often,” I said. “All these years, I believed that God had made me as I am. I believed that either God or the Devil made William immortal after the Battle of Hattin, and He made me the same so that I had the strength to put a stop to William’s evil. A long time ago, the Archbishop of Jerusalem told me that very thing. I swore an oath to my brother’s wife, Isabella to avenge her and her children, and I swore revenge for William’s murder of my first wife. But the notion that my blood was changed, was given this power by God… well, that is a notion I have accepted ever since and so my purpose is not simply a moral good but a God-given duty. The Lord changed my blood so as to create balance with William’s evil. And so the evil that I have done, the slaughter that I have done, that was ultimately just. But what if none of that is true? What if I was never gifted this power but was born with it, through this man who is the father of our father? What does that mean for my soul?”
I fell silent, irritated at my intellectual deficiencies. I had half a mind to ask Thomas what he thought or even, God forbid, Stephen. But these were questions, or vulnerabilities, that I could express only to my wife.